"VRE" 2005 Obituary

VRETIS o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2005-09-06 published
VRETIS,
Kyriakos
It is with great sadness that we announce the sudden passing
of Kyriakos on Saturday, September 3rd, 2005 at the age of 62.
son of the late Vasilios
VRETIS, he is survived by his mother
Dionysia. Kyriakos was a beloved and devoted husband to his wife
Maria and a loving father to his children Bill (Vasilios), Artemis
and Lisimahos (Aki). Most importantly, he was a devoted grandfather
to his grand_son Nicholas who was his pride and joy. He will also
be greatly missed by his sisters and brother in Greece and Australia,
by all his nieces and nephews and his many family Friends. His
great joy in life, along with his family, was as a Chanter at
Prophet Elias and St. George Greek Orthodox Churches. His voice
will be greatly missed. Friends will be received on Tuesday,
September 6, 2005 from 2 to 4 and 6 to 9 p.m. at the Heritage
Funeral Centre, 50 Overlea Blvd., 416-423-1000. Funeral Services
to be held at St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church, 30 Thorncliffe
Park Dr. on Wednesday, September 7 at 10: 00 a.m. Interment Pine
Hills Cemetery.

VRETTAKOS o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2005-03-21 published
He made every day a good hair day
Yorkville hair colourist worked until age 91
Bon vivant and master of his craft beloved by clients
By Catherine
DUNPHY,
ObituaryWriterLegendary hair colourist Pierre
TESSIER was on the job up until
the week before he was admitted to hospital where he died three
weeks later on February 17. Even though he was 91 years old,
he never had any intention of ever stopping work.
At The Private World of Mary Tripi, the upscale Yorkville hair
salon where he was employed for the last decade of his life,
there's a sweeping spiral staircase that leads up to a big, bright
room overlooking the old fire hall across the street. Every morning
he would pause at the top of the stairs, an erect dapper figure,
immaculate in one of his starched shirts and silk cravats, and
beam at his co-workers. Mary
TRIPI herself works at the station
at the top of the stairs.
"It was a wonderful smile," she said.
A client recommended she hire
TESSIER but warned her he was old.
"Then I met him," she recalled. "He wasn't old. He had a magic.
He was the age he was -- but also he wasn't."
He loved this world of artistry and egos, power and pampering,
where four days a week he engaged in the curious intimacy forged
between a woman and the man or woman she trusts with her hair.
TESSIER may have been the last colourist in Toronto using a technique
for highlighting he had learned from his father and grandfather
in his birthplace of France: a laborious process involving cotton
balls and hours of his client's time. "Very old school," said
his colleague, Nicholas
VRETTAKOS. "
You need a lot of patience.
But he had more than 60 years experience. He was a master at
what he did."
His workstation was the fourth chair in the colourist row, between
Monique SANJAREI and
VRETTAKOS, who both adored him. He was in
the middle of things, where he liked to be.
On his lunch breaks he would look out over the salon with its
cool green walls and softly lit mirrors, where women in salon
wrappers, hair combed in damp furrows back from unadorned faces,
feel safe, protected.
"I was addicted to him," said Sherry Eaton
DREW.
TESSIER streaked
her hair for 37 years. "It was horrifically slow but absolute
perfection."
She was stopped by strangers on the streets of Rome, Paris and
London and asked for the name of her hairdresser, she said. "He
was a maestro."
He turned down a request from actor Maggie Smith to do her colour
when she was performing at Stratford. She wanted him to go to
Stratford; he thought she should come to the salon. It didn't
happen and he didn't care.
"He didn't need the accolades of doing Maggie Smith's hair,"
said his friend, Carole
WILSON.
TESSIER became Friends with a good many of his clients. They
were all blindly loyal to him: Margann
ANDREWS followed
TESSIER
through four hairdressing salons to Tripi's, where
TESSIER arrived
with a file of 350 names of clients willing to pay upwards of
$250 for colour and highlighting.
"He always made me feel special,"
ANDREWS said. "He saw the beauty
in everything: people and paintings."
Carolyn WALKER began as a client in 1974. "I found him totally
interesting," she said.
WALKER had worked for the U.N. in Geneva
they found they had much in common. "It was never gossip, never
empty talk. He was a man of substance. His conversation was about
ideas and culture and travel and food."
And, if asked, about his adventures.
The son of a barber and hair salon owner, and the grand_son of
a wigmaker for the Paris Opera,
TESSIER's own career began in
the late 1920s when he apprenticed at a Paris salon from 9 p.m.
to 2 a.m., when it was busy repairing the coiffeurs of the women
who worked at the bordello below. He quit to join the army and
see the world for the next three years. Back in Paris, he was
working in the storied salon at the Georges V hotel, when World
War 2 broke out.
By 1940 he was a prisoner of war, interned in a stalag near Baden-Baden,
from which he escaped twice, one of those times disguised as
a woman. But when he and a buddy were recaptured the second time,
they were moved to a higher security Prisoner of War camp near
Düsseldorf and shackled together in a small cell for weeks. As
soon as they were released, they escaped again. They thought
they had made it into Belgium; they hadn't and were recaptured.
Again he escaped, this time during the Allied air raid on Cologne
in 1943 and with the help of the Resistance, got to England where
he joined de Gaulle's Free French. On D-Day he was hitting Sword
Beach with commandos, but when the war was over, he didn't settle
down and return to the salon. Instead he enlisted in the French
Foreign Legion because he wanted to travel.
He was posted in North Africa and later Indo-China where he was
captured and held prisoner again. And one more time, he escaped.
But it took him two years to get back to the Legion's outpost
in Morocco, he often said.
He was ready to get back to work. He rejoined the staff at the
Georges V hotel, later moved to Monte Carlo and Cannes where
he famously did Marlene Dietrich's hair. He met and married a
beautiful Parisienne ballerina named Lucienne with whom he had
a son. But in 1957, restless again, he moved the family to Montreal
where he had a new job as head of the newly opened salon at the
Ritz-Carleton hotel.
But 10 years later, he moved to Toronto. Alone. His wife had
died, after a long battle with cancer. And his son?
TESSIER rarely
told people this, but his son returned to France and refused
to speak with his father, whom he accused of not spending enough
time with his dying mother.
TESSIER never heard from him again,
although he tried on at least two occasions to locate him.
This was not one of the stories he ever told his clients; instead
he would chat about his travels, the latest art show or ballet
or French film in town. But only when asked. He was a quiet man
by nature, focused on his work.
In Toronto he met Anna
WILSON, a glamorous Scotswoman in the
fashion business. They were an elegant pair, hosting sparkling
dinner parties featuring French recipes prepared by
TESSIER and
only the best wine.
"They were modern people, so interested in everything going on
in the city," recalled Carole
WILSON, who married Anna
WILSON's
son Patrick. A francophone from Quebec, Carole
WILSON was taken
under TESSIER's wing. Their Friendship continued until his death,
even after
WILSON was divorced from his stepson and after Anna
WILSON's death.
"He was like a father to me," she said. "We were his family."
TESSIER worked in some of Toronto's best-known salons -- for
Vicki Runge, Gerald and Lloyd, Monroe's in the Colonnade -- before
joining Mary Tripi. When he turned 80, dozens of his clients
and colourists whom he had trained turned up at Bumpkin's Restaurant
for a surprise party. When he turned 90, the staff at Mary Tripi
took him out to dinner and gave him a surprise trip to the Greek
islands. On his 91st birthday (last April 13) he slipped away
to Montreal to see an art show and old Friends. Last September,
he rented an apartment in Montmartre and wandered through his
old haunts in Paris.
When he fell ill with pneumonia at the end of January, clients
and colleagues rushed to his bedside. His hospital room resembled
a garden, one said.
WILSON was there every night.
WALKER spent
hours by his bedside.
Sherry DREW was there every day for two weeks -- "He was my friend.
How could I not?" she said -- until she had to travel out of
town four days before he died. She walked down the hallway weeping
because she knew she would never see him again.
She and the staff of Mary Tripi are fundraising for a scholarship
in TESSIER's name. It will go to a student of hair colouring.
They believe it is a fitting tribute to a man who always did
his best work so that women, as
DREW put it, "can go out feeling
wonderful and invincible."